


What to Do When the World Ends

by aces



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Adams
Genre: Crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:59:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If this is the afterlife," Arthur said, "somebody needs to do some interior decorating."</p>
            </blockquote>





	What to Do When the World Ends

**Author's Note:**

> It is not in fact Guide!slash. It is in fact Guide!dialogue in which Ford and Arthur discuss the finer points of fancying each other. In excruciating and tedious detail.
> 
> Bastards.
> 
> The ending is also a total cop-out. However, somehow, I feel Douglas Adams would approve. Or not.

_Through the new strangeness of noise and light he could just make out the shape of Ford Prefect sitting back and laughing wildly.  
~Mostly Harmless_

"Ford," Arthur said as the afterlife resolved around them. Well, he assumed it was the afterlife. He had made that mistake before, but he didn't know what else it could be. Ford could no doubt tell him and confuse him terribly. He decided not to ask.

"Yes, Arthur?" Ford said, looking around him with the mild interest he liked to cultivate when he didn't know what the zark was going on.

"Why did you always come back?"

"Sorry?" Ford looked at Arthur. "Not following you…"

"You always came back," Arthur said patiently. The thought had popped into his head, right before what he assumed had been a rather large explosion destroying the entire Earth once again, and the thought had still been there when they arrived—here. Wherever it turned out "here" was. "Like a particularly irksome boomerang. You were always coming after me. Come to that," he added suddenly, "why the devil did you choose to save me of all people in the first place when the Earth was blown up? Originally?"

Ford blinked, because it gave him time to think.

"Well?" said Arthur, expectantly.

"Well," said Ford, finally, when nothing graciously decided to enter his head to help him lie. "I always rather fancied you."

"You what?"

"Oh yes," said Ford, shrugging. "Couldn't be helped. Very annoying. Especially when you'd get all confused-looking when I tried to explain about eddies in the timestream or something."

"He still is, is he?" Arthur said in surprise.

"Oh, don't start *that* again—" Ford sighed and gave up, which was probably the best thing to do unless he wanted an absurdly confusing discussion to go on for the rest of their afterlife. "I must fancy you. It's completely inexplicable why I'd keep bothering with you otherwise, isn't it?"

"Oh," said Arthur, and tried to think about this for a while, and when he'd thought about it for a while tried not to think about it anymore. "Yes, I suppose it is, when you put it like that."

"There you are then," Ford shrugged again, and all was silent for a time.

"You mean to say I've gone on this galactic jaunt for the past God knows how long," Arthur said suddenly, "all because you _fancied_ me?"

"You didn't _have_ to go," Ford pointed out. "I could have left you to be blown up with the rest of your planet, in fact. That first time, I mean," he added, somewhat ruefully as he glanced about. The afterlife was an awfully dull place so far, it appeared. Ford had been hoping for a party or something. At least a little more alcohol than was currently on offer. Which was in fact none at all.

"Well, yes," Arthur said, and he was beginning to get excited again, which Ford knew was never a good thing, "but after that you _kept_ pulling me into horrendous all-over-the-Galaxy things. I could have been perfectly content in my cave on pre-historic Earth! I could have been _utterly_ content with Fenchurch in Islington! I would have been _horrendously_ content on Lumella making sandwiches!"

"A: you hated that cave and were all set to go mad when I found you—bone-in-beard included," Ford ticked off on his fingers, "B: _Fenchurch_ was not content to stay in Islington because she had Life, the Universe, and Everything issues to get sorted out, which is quite hard to do in Islington, as well you know—remember the cave, Arthur—and C: you and Random would have driven each other batty and homicide would have been involved sooner or later. Really," Ford added, with one of his smiles that Arthur didn't like very much, and there were many of them, "I've been doing you a favour all this time."

"I would have been content to blow up with my planet!" Arthur yelled, and then got very quiet.

"Oh, well, I'm glad of that," Ford said, "since you just did."

"Were you being sarcastic?"

"Was I?" Ford sounded surprised.

They stared at each other for a moment.

"Oh, blast," Arthur sighed at last, and sat down. He looked around. "If this is the afterlife," he said, "somebody needs to do some interior decorating."

Ford sat down next to him, comfortably. He didn't bother looking around, as he'd already done that, and there wasn't anything to see anyway. "I agree," he said.

"I suppose we could," Arthur said, staring off into the distance.

"How?" Ford asked. "For that matter, why? You have as much interior decorating sense as a pitbull. So, for that matter, do I."

"Er, why a pitbull?"

Ford shrugged and waved a hand. "Because a pitbull seemed in that moment an extremely unlikely creature to have any sort of interior decorating sense. Not having personally spoken to any pitbulls concerning their thoughts on whether chartreuse is a good color to use for wallpaper, however, I really couldn't say."

"Sometimes, Ford," and Arthur sounded a little depressed, "you make very little sense."

"Sometimes, Arthur," Ford replied, "the same could be said of you."

An almost companiable silence descended over the pair as nothing happened. As nothing continued to happen, both men began to get a little bored.

"You actually fancied me?" Arthur said suddenly.

Ford was almost grateful for the interruption of nothing happening. Though he did wish Arthur would find a new subject to focus on. "Yes," he said and hoped to leave it at that.

"Do you still fancy me now?"

"Does it really matter?"

"I think it does." Arthur sounded stubborn. It was a rare thing for him to sound, but Ford had enough experience to know that he was, in the vernacular, screwed.

"Yes, probably," Ford answered readily. "Though it doesn't really matter in the end, as we appear to be the only ones sharing this particular afterlife, so that even if I didn't currently fancy you and this keeps up, I'd end up fancying you eventually out of pure desperation."

"That's very odd, don't you think?"

Ford's forehead creased. "It's very odd that I'd end up eventually fancying you when I already have in fact done so and you were _not_ the only other person in the near vicinity for infinity on end, or the fact that I ever fancied you in the first place?"

Arthur frowned. "No. The fact that we're the only ones here."

Ford shrugged and relaxed. "I'm afraid, surprising as it is, that I have very little experience of afterlifes. They were never a particular hobby of mine."

"Are they of somebody else's?" Arthur sounded surprised.

"Oh yes. Some people make a sport out of trying out various afterlifes. I'd show you the bits about it in the _Guide_, but…" Ford held out his empty hands, not quite apologetically.

"Quite," said Arthur.

More silence.

"I don't suppose you ever fancied me," Ford said casually once he'd deemed the silence excruciating enough. Perhaps not with the fine calculations Marvin the Paranoid Android might have used (and thank Zarquon *he* wasn't in their afterlife, as that might very well have caused Ford to find a way to commit suicide), but he'd always had a pretty good sense of timing on his own.

Arthur started and glanced at him, eyebrows stretching for his hairline. "I don't know," he said and subsided. "I don't think I ever really thought about it."

"Oh. Well, then."

A thoughtful pause.

"There was that one time I think I considered giving you a good snog," Arthur said thoughtfully, staring off into the not-very-interesting distance.

"Really?" Ford sounded mildly interested, in an attempt to hide how extremely interested he truly was.

"Oh yes," Arthur nodded, and squinted at the not-very-interesting distance. "I was completely blotto, of course. And immediately after I had the thought you threw up and I passed out, so it was a bit of a moot point."

"Oh." Ford reflected for a moment. His eyes widened. "_Oh_. I think I remember that night. Wasn't very pretty."

"No," Arthur agreed. "Nor a very pretty morning either, I seem to recall. Rather embarrassing in fact."

Ford winced. "Yes," he said. "Quite."

He joined Arthur in watching the not-very-interesting distance, because there seemed little else to do at the moment. He'd at least expected a bit more to happen in the afterlife. Honestly, he didn't see what all the fuss was about.

"I don't suppose you'd care for a shag?" Ford said finally when he couldn't take the not-very-interesting distance anymore.

"Sorry, what?" Arthur looked at him, startled again.

"Well, I fancied you and perhaps still do," Ford sounded quite reasonable, "and you once thought about snogging me. And there's nothing else here to do. And we're both bored. And even if either of us had any sort of interior decorating skills, there's nothing *to* decorate." He shrugged. "We might as well do something that's at least a little enjoyable."

"Oh." Arthur thought about this for a while. "You have a point. Erm, alright then."

Ford frowned at him. "You could at least sound a little more excited about it," he pointed out.

Arthur started to blink a lot. "I'm sorry?"

"It's a bit hard to get in the mood when you sound like you're just doing it because there's nothing else to do." Ford wasn't _exactly_ sulking, but he was on the brink. There was the definite promise of sulk in the air.

"Er, well," said Arthur, "that's rather the impression you gave me about the whole matter."

"I was just making a suggestion! _You_ could have been a bit more enthused about it."

Arthur continued to blink a lot. "I'm sorry, Ford, I'm just not feeling particularly enthusiastic about very much of anything at the moment. I managed to muck up being a father in less than six months, which I know isn't very hard but I did a rather spectacularly appallingly bad job; I just saw my entire planet destroyed again, on which I also happened to die this time, and really the first time or two was bad enough; and you just informed me you have perhaps fancied me for the past—how long now? Fifteen years?" He looked quite bewildered. "You'll excuse me if it takes a while for enthusiasm to be mustered up."

"I haven't fancied you *all* that time," Ford said coolly. "Just off-and-on. You know."

"Oh yes, of course," said Arthur, rather acidly. "My mistake." He turned back to the not-very-interesting distance and remained pointedly silent.

"Oh, don't get insulted now," Ford said. "At least I _occasionally_ fancied you, which is apparently more than could be said of you for me."

Arthur glanced sideways at him, shook his head, and turned back to his not-very-interesting distance.

Ford couldn't stand the silence for very long. "You'll have to talk to me eventually," he pointed out. "Or you'll go mad."

"Who says I haven't already?"

"Alright, _I'll_ go mad," Ford answered quickly. "You don't want to see me mad. I start hallucinating all sorts of things."

"So I've heard," said Arthur dryly. "Something about lemons and lakes that may or may not be martinis, wasn't it?"

"Gin and tonics but yes, you've got the general idea. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

"We've barely been here any time at all, Ford. Give yourself at least a day or two to go mad, won't you?"

"Who says it hasn't been a day or two? How can we have any sense of time in a place like this, Arthur?" Ford gestured around him at the great, vast nothingness. Arthur followed his hand, looking a little unsure. He leant a little closer to Arthur. "We *are* our only mental stimulation," he pointed out quietly.

Now Arthur looked a little unsettled.

Ford sidled a little closer. "Infinity's an awful long time, you know," he said.

"We don't know we'll be here for an infinity," Arthur said, and swallowed. "This could just be the—waiting room to the afterlife."

"We've been kept waiting an awful long time, don't you think?"

"Not when a whole planet was just blown up!"

"And we're the only ones being kept waiting?"

Arthur hated it when Ford sounded reasonable. He made the most insane things sound reasonable, and then Arthur ended up gallivanting across the Universe in Vogon and Infinitely Improbable ships with men with two heads and mice bent on discovering what the hell 42 meant. Alright, no, Ford usually couldn't even manage to make two plus two equalling four sound reasonable, but he was sounding reasonable now and it was making Arthur's head hurt.

"My head hurts," he complained.

"I could do something about that," Ford suggested, in what he no doubt fondly assumed was a sexy sort of tone of voice. Arthur snorted.

"I'm not sure I'd want to know what you could do," he retorted, and Ford sat back with what was definitely a sulking air about him.

"Oh, don't start _that_," Arthur snapped crossly. "Or else it really _will_ get interminably boring around here."

"It already *is* interminably boring around here," Ford pointed out, not untruthfully. "Shagging will certainly make the time pass more quickly."

"You're not going to let up about this, are you?"

Ford shrugged one shoulder.

"Oh very well then," Arthur said bad-temperedly. "Let's just get it over with."

"No," Ford said lightly, and studied his nails, "I'm not interested now. We talked too much, and now you're in a bad mood. Too late."

Arthur stared. "Unfair! You got me all interested now!"

"Yes, but you got me _un_interested," Ford answered, sounding very patient. "And really, Arthur, that takes some doing."

Arthur glared. And then, in a fit of pique, he pushed Ford down and kissed him quite soundly. Contrary to Ford's protestations a moment before, he responded rather agreeably.

Eventually Arthur sat back, breathing a trifle heavily (and if he'd thought about it, he would have questioned why he would have needed to breathe in the afterlife or whatever this non-place was) and said a trifle smugly, "At least I finally snogged you."

"It's only fair then I finally get to shag you," Ford responded, sounding quite reasonable again.

"I suppose that's true," Arthur conceded, and Ford pushed him down this time.

Eventually they realized it was all a terrible mistake, they were not in fact dead and hanging about in an afterlife or waiting-room-for-an-afterlife but had simply gotten turned around in a particularly dark corridor of the _Heart of Gold_. This however did not stop them enjoying themselves immensely.

The end.


End file.
